The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (61-70)

More of the best songs of the decade…

(Click here for the whole list so far, with a Spotify playlist.)


70. Of Monsters and Men — "Little Talks"

The female singer of this Icelandic band, Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, explained that she and the male singer, Ragnar “Raggi” þórhallsson, wrote this song about a widow having a "conversation" with her dead husband. Hilmarsdóttir added: "We don’t know if she’s going crazy or if someone’s actually there."




69. Spoon — "Let Me Be Mine"




68. Passion Pit – "Take a Walk"




67. The Black Keys — "Tighten Up"

David Letterman seemed to like this: "That's it! That's what we're looking for! … Don't kid yourself: this kid can whistle."

(Official video.)




66. The Weeknd — "In the Night"

It's no surprise that this Canadian singer/songwriter has said one of his biggest inspirations is Michael Jackson. You could imagine this song on the Bad album in place of "Smooth Criminal" or "Dirty Diana."




65. Foster the People — "Pumped up Kicks"

Some radio stations banned this controversial song about a school shooter. The lyrics start in the third person but switch to the shooter's voice in first person. See Wikipedia for the songwriter's explanation. He recently talked about possibly "retiring" the song.

This live performance is better than the album version:




64. Alice in Chains — "The One You Know"




63. The Big Moon — "Silent Movie Susie"




62. Hiatus Kaiyote — "Jekyll"




61. Pharrell Williams — "Happy"




<— 71 - 80

51 - 60 —>

Woman in the Box

Here's "Man in the Box," from Alice in Chains' debut album, Facelift (1990), sung by Gabriela Gunčíková, who changes "man" to "woman":




Original:

"One more special message to go, and then I'm done, and I can go home"

So, that's the grunge list.

I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize some of the people who made this great music who aren't around to make any more of it.

It's a commonplace that rock 'n' roll and jazz are fueled by drugs. [UPDATE: This post inspired one by someone else: 10 theories why artists are so prone to drug use.] Well, it's easy to think about what actually exists for us to see and hear; it's harder to think about what doesn't exist but should.

Shannon Hoon, lead singer of Blind Melon (#24), died of a cocaine overdose on October 21, 1995. He was 28.

Layne Staley, leader singer of Alice in Chains (#14, #5), died from a mixture of heroin and cocaine on April 5, 2002. He was 34. Near the end of his life, he weighed 86 pounds despite being 6'1". He openly admitted that he no longer enjoyed getting high or anything else in life, and that he knew his use of heroin was going to kill him soon.

I vividly remember when I was 13, sitting around watching MTV on April 8, 1994. Kurt Loder announced on MTV News that Kurt Cobain had been found dead in his home and that the cause of death was "a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." I was so young that the meaning of that delicate phrasing didn't register with me, so I asked my mom about it. She had to explain: "That means he killed himself."

He had died 3 days earlier — like Layne Staley, on April 5. He was 27. He left behind a one-year-old daughter and many others.

Nirvana (#18, #9, #1) released only three proper studio albums. In a Rolling Stone interview near the end of his life, Cobain was critical of the band's soft/loud formula and talked about wanting to branch out stylistically. He said he wanted to "learn to go in between those things, go back and forth, almost become psychedelic in a way."

We'll never get to hear how the band might have developed; the analogy would be if John Lennon had died not in 1980 but in 1965. They should have done so much more. But they changed the direction of rock music in the few years they were around. (As I said yesterday, I realize that other bands have a better claim to inventing grunge, but Nirvana perfected it and reached a lot more people.)

For days after the news broke, MTV constantly reran the Nirvana Unplugged concert, and I watched it almost as constantly. I started learning to play guitar that summer . . .

(Photo of Cobain gallery by Christian Payne. Photo of Cobain tribute bench in Seattle by Eric Shoemaker.)

And the top 5 grunge songs are...

Now that we're into the home stretch of the grunge top 40, I'm going to roll out one of the last five songs every day this week...


5. Alice in Chains - Would?

For some reason, I've always found this to be one of the most emotionally affecting songs of the grunge era. I love the coda (the part that begins, "Am I wrong..."), when they shift to the relative major key with such a sense of absolute determination.



(Click here for song #4.)

(Click here for the whole list.)

The 40 greatest grunge songs (15-11)

(Click here for the whole list.)


15. Hum - Stars

This starts out underwhelming, and then it blows you away.




14. Alice in Chains - No Excuses

Vocal harmonies have been largely neglected in rock music from the '90s onward, so it's nice to hear this kind of arrangement. The result doesn't really fit into "grunge" or any other category I can think of. It's just plain good music. (From their excellent acoustic EP Jar of Flies.)




13. Pearl Jam - Even Flow

The rockingest portrait of homelessness I've ever heard.

Freezin', rests his head on a pillow made of concrete...




12. Weezer - Undone (The Sweater Song)

Perfect nerd rock.

Watch out for the dogs!

If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away...




11. The Breeders - Cannonball

How to make a great rock recording by stringing together one gimmick after another.

The album this is from, Last Splash, and their debut album, Pod, are both essential items in the music library of anyone who's into good '90s music.

Check, check, check, ah-ooooohhh-ooh...



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